Our sister site, Skogsforum, summarizes sales statistics for forwarder sales in Sweden for the second quarter of 2020. Sales in the first quarter was good with 111 registered** new forwarders. You can read more about the last report here. 
The forwarder market is slowing down
During the second quarter of 2020, the market has gone down to only 67 registered forwarders in Sweden. That is slightly less than the average second quarter during the last 10 years.
Most likely, however, the market hasn´t actually stopped as brutal as it seems. The ongoing pandemic has caused problems for the machine manufacturers, such as delaying component deliveries. In some cases, at the beginning of Q2, factories have also closed down temporary because of the Covid-19 outbreak. From especially Germany and Italy, who have big component manufacturers, it was difficult to get ordered parts for forest machines during this time. Now, Europe seems to have opened again so this problem should be solved.
Onwards
Most manufacturers of forestry machines had full order books at the beginning of 2020. Cancelations of ordered machines seem not to have been on the same level as during the crisis in 2008/2009. The big question is what the future looks like.
A hint about that could be given from Ponsses financial report for the first six months of 2020. Ponsse is one of the largest forest machine manufacturers. Their reports are interesting when looking at the CTL (Cut-To-Length) machine market as they only manufacture CTL machines.
During the first six months Ponsses sales went down by 12,5 %, and the profits by 28,3 %. If we look only at Q2 it looks even worse. 23,6 % down on sales and 52 % on profits compared to Q2 in 2019. The total profits for Ponsse so far 2020 is however still positive, + 6,4 %.
If this reflects the whole forestry machine industry is difficult to say, but it gives a hint and maybe it shows that also this industry is actually affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
(Please note that the figures from Ponsse is Worldwide and contains both harvesters and forwarders. This article in general is about the Swedish market for forwarders only. On the other hand, the Swedish market for CTL machines is the largest in the World so it reflects the World market quite good).
Source: Swedish Transport Agency
Still green at the top
Ponsse had a strong first half-year and ends up one machine better than Komatsu Forest. The market leader for the Swedish market is still John Deere who so far has delivered 41 % of the forwards in Sweden this year. This is to be compared to the same period last year with 30 %. In the second place is Ponsse with 21,3 % and third Komatsu Forest with 20,8 %.
The next months is difficult to predict. The market shares can change quickly as only a few machines + or – can make a big change.
Hard competition on the Swedish forwarder market
When looking at specific models, it´s still the John Deere 1510G that is the most popular model. It sold more than twice as much during Q1 and Q2 as the second most popular, the John Deere 1910G.
Among the top-10 machines, only John Deere, Ponsse and Komatsu are represented.
Source: Swedish Transport Agency
* This is a summary of an article signed Torbjörn Johnsen at the Swedish sister-site Skogsforum.se.
** In Sweden, all forwarders are registered by the authority Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen). As the Swedish market for CTL-machines is the largest market in the World (2019), those figures give a fairly good picture of the total market for CTL-machines. The harvesters are, however, not registered by the Transport Agency, but the number of manufactured harvesters follows the number of forwarders in most cases.
